About those canned food drives

In this skeptical and critical video about canned food drives, from Adam Ruins Everything and Upworthy, a food bank administrator offers a good balanced summary of the main point:

Canned food drives don't suck, [but] they're not the most efficient way to give.

To allow food banks and food pantries to serve food that is fresh, healthy, and desirable, consider giving cash instead.

Want to help feed the poor? Ditch the canned goods and donate money. Adam Ruins Everything outlines why. (via truTV)
Posted by Upworthy on Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Victory garden 2.0

Ideas for Change in America is a nationwide competition to identify the best ideas for change in America. The top 10 ideas will be presented to the Obama administration just before inauguration day and form the basis of a nationwide advocacy campaign to turn each idea into actual policy. One of the more popular change ideas gaining traction is Victory Garden 2.0, who as of 01/08/09 held a top 30 spot (25th) with 1583 votes and needs 2380 more votes to make the top 10. Voting ends at 5pm ET on Thursday, January 15. From the site:

Thousands of Americans and people from the around the world are asking the Obamas to lead by example on climate change, health policy, economic self-reliance, food security, and energy independence by replanting an organic food garden at the White House with the produce going to the First Kitchen and to local food pantries.

The many successes of the first Victory Garden movement were the result of effective public policy, bold leadership at a time of national crisis, and the commitment of millions of citizens who were ready to roll up their sleeves for the greater good.

There's no better, more symbolic place for launching a new National Victory Garden Program than at the White House, "America’s House". There's no better, more urgent time than now. And there's NOTHING that can beat the fresh taste of locally grown, home-cooked foods.

1) Victory Gardens (behind homes, schools, in vacant urban lots, etc.) produced 40% of the nation’s produce at their peak, helped conserve food and natural resources at a time of crisis, resulted in the highest consumption rates of fruits and vegetables our nation has seen, and helped keep millions of Americans physically fit and active.

(2) First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden on the White House lawn in1943 over the objections of the USDA, inspiring millions by her example.

(3) The UN estimates that 1 billion people will go hungry in 2009 while climate scientists predict this year will be one the five warmest years on record. --- For more on the campaign to grow some organic food at the White House, see: www.eattheview.org and www.thewhofarm.org

Eat The View has created some fun videos to watch including this one that characterizes the history of the White House grounds.



The Garden of Eatin': A Short History of America's Garden from roger doiron on Vimeo.

The Victory Garden 2.0 idea has endorsements from nonprofits and bloggers as well, including: The Backward Future, The Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology, the UK's Wholesome Food Association, ecoyear, The Garden Klog, Kitchen Gardeners International and Tuft's own New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.

Food stamps versus private voluntary assistance?

Having a sense of social justice does not automatically mean a person endorses all food programs for the poor.

There has been a thoughtful, fairly gentle, literature over the years, in which some anti-poverty advocates raise important concerns and questions about the food bank network that supplies the nation's charitable soup kitchens and food pantries. Perhaps the most notable reference is Janet Poppendieck's book, Sweet Charity.

A recent, provocative, contribution -- available without fee on the internet -- is a December article (.pdf) by Beth Osborne Daponte and Shannon Bade in the journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (in the blogosphere, see also this summary). Notwithstanding the private character of the charitable food donation system, Daponte and Bade attribute its rapid growth in recent years to public policy -- that is, changes in the government's commodity donation programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and changes in the FSP that leave participants in need of inexpensive supplementary food sources. About TEFAP, they write: "Compared to the FSP, TEFAP is administered inequitably and in an ad hoc manner."

Daponte and Bade discuss one sign that the private system is not entirely complementary to the Food Stamp Program: the surprisingly high rates of FSP non-participation by food pantry participants. Here, for example, is a graphic from an ERS article by Laura Tiehen in 2004. One can think of a number of ways in which the Food Stamp Program serves low-income Americans better -- it's larger in scale, it uses the strengths of the market economy better by employing normal retail channels, it is less patronizing, and it offers families greater choice over what to purchase.